New innovation management paradigms in the knowledge-driven economy

The growing importance of knowledge as a production factor and as a determinant of innovation can be explained by the continuous accumulation of technical knowledge over time. Innovation Management Techniques (IMTs) are critical to support the process of innovation in firms and help them in a systematic way to meet new market challenges

Does grade retention affect achievement? Some evidence from PISA

Grade retention practices are at the forefront of the educational debate. In this paper, we use PISA 2009 data for Spain to measure the effect of grade retention on students achievement. One important problem when analyzing this question is that school outcomes and the propensity to repeat a grade are likely to be determined simultaneously. We address this problem by estimating a Switching Regression Model. We …find that grade retention has a negative impact on educational outcomes, but we confi…rm the importance of endogenous selection, which makes observed differences between repeaters and non-repeaters appear 14.6% lower than they actually are. The effect on PISA scores of repeating is much smaller (-10% of non-repeaters average) than the counterfactual reduction that non-repeaters would suffer had they been retained as repeaters (-24% of their average). Furthermore, those who repeated a grade during primary education suffered more than those who repeated a grade of secondary school, although the effect of repeating at both times is, as expected, much larger.Grade retention, educational scores, PISA

Does grade retention affect achievement? Some evidence from Pisa

Grade retention practices are at the forefront of the educational debate. In this paper, we use PISA 2009 data for Spain to measure the effect of grade retention on students’achievement. One important problem when analyzing this question is that school outcomes and the propensity to repeat a grade are likely to be determined simultaneously. We address this problem by estimating a Switching Regression Model. We find that grade retention has a negative impact on educational outcomes, but we confirm the importance of endogenous selection, which makes observed differences between repeaters and non-repeaters appear 14.6% lower than they actually are. The effect on PISA scores of repeating is much smaller (-10% of non-repeaters’average) than the counterfactual reduction that non-repeaters would suffer had they been retained as repeaters (-24% of their average). Furthermore, those who repeated a grade during primary education suffered more than those who repeated a grade of secondary school, although the effect of repeating at both times is, as expected, much larger.Grade retention, educational scores, PISA

La Autorregulación de una Economía Territorial. Una perspectiva postmoderna

En los distintos niveles territoriales (local, nacional, mundial…) que se dan en el dominio de los fenómenos económicos, podemos distinguir distintos tipos de sistemas económicos (locales, nacionales, mundial…). En este ensayo hemos tratado de dar una respuesta científica a la pregunta qué es una economía territorial, por medio de una proposición de mecanismos que en su operar generan todos los fenómenos involucrados en la citada pregunta. Para ello hemos adoptado una perspectiva enactiva y hemos tomado como principal marco metodológico de referencia la Teoría de la Autopoiesis aplicada a los sistemas sociales junto con algunas aportaciones del institucionalismo evolutivo. Así hemos podido concluir que una economía territorial, como sistema económico territorial, es un sistema social: a) que surge espontáneamente, cuando se dan las condiciones para ello, fruto, en última instancia, de la voluntad de los seres humanos que lo componen; b) que tiene la capacidad de autorregularse, gracias a la existencia de instituciones y de continuas decisiones de innumerables agentes que tienen como referencia una ideología determinada; y c) cuya evolución depende de la capacidad que tengan dichos mecanismos de autorregulación para neutralizar las perturbaciones procedentes de su exterior o de su interior sin perder su identidad, aunque para ello, en alguna ocasión, sea necesario un cambio ideológico

Representative galaxy age-metallicity relationships

The ongoing surveys of galaxies and those for the next generation of telescopes will demand the execution of high-CPU consuming machine codes for recovering detailed star formation histories (SFHs) and hence age-metallicity relationships (AMRs). We present here an expeditive method which provides quick-look AMRs on the basis of representative ages and metallicities obtained from colour-magnitude diagram (CMD) analyses. We have tested its perfomance by generating synthetic CMDs for a wide variety of galaxy SFHs. The representative AMRs turn out to be reliable down to a magnitude limit with a photometric completeness factor higher than $\sim$ 85 per cent, and trace the chemical evolution history for any stellar population (represented by a mean age and an intrinsic age spread) with a total mass within ~ 40 per cent of the more massive stellar population in the galaxy.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ

Drivers and Impacts of R&D Adoption on Transport and Logistics Services

Actually, technologies and applications in industries are changing via business restructuring, new business models, new knowledge and supply chains. So R&D is not focused primarily on manufacturing industry as it used to be, but on different kinds of industries as logistics and transport (TLS). Nevertheless, the characteristics of the TLS industry determine the introduction of specific R&D solutions accordingly to sectors operations. The objective of this paper is to describe the R&D opportunities in the TLS industry and how managers use them to make their businesses more innovative and efficient. Using the Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) model the paper identifies the links between R&D adoption and innovation dynamics. Relating the findings, on the driver’s side there are three points that are worth mentioning: increasing market competition, the relationships of firms interacting with each other and the availability and quality of complementary assets such as employee skills and IT know-how. On the impacts’ side, firms advanced in terms of implementing R&D solutions are more likely to implement organizational changes. Finally, a set of recommendations on how to further improve the continuous innovation in the TLS industry is presented

La Fono(des)cortesía: Marcas prosódicas (des)corteses en español hablado. Su estudio a través de corpus orales

En este artículo se intenta mostrar la relevancia de los mecanismos fónicos, y particularmente de la entonación, para la expresión de cortesía o descortesía verbales. La descripción de tal relación se lleva a cabo a partir de una selección de fragmentos de habla que han servido para fundamentar nuestra hipótesis de partida y que proceden de un corpus diverso: por un lado, de conversaciones coloquiales (Briz y Grupo Val.Es.Co, 2002); por otro, de dos series de TV emitidas por la cadena Antena 3 (Manos a la obra, capítulo: ¿¡Cómo está el patio!¿ y Doctor Mateo, capítulo: ¿De cómo Mateo comprende que eso que siente son celos y no indigestión¿) y, finalmente, otros son ejemplos derivados de investigaciones previas (publicidad radiofónica o televisiva, análisis de corpus orales específicos, etc.). Así pues, en los ejemplos seleccionados se reconocen diferentes efectos pragmáticos de atenuación (cortés) e intensificación (cortés o descortés) realzados o generados por la presencia de algún rasgo de índole entonativa. De este modo, de la coincidencia de recursos fonocorteses y fonodescorteses observados en distintas formas de discurso oral, cabe derivar la propuesta de que la descripción del componente fonocortés (o fonodescortés), aplicando un método comparativo de triangulación, podría constituirse como punto de partida de una investigación más amplia orientada al estudio de las implicaciones del componente fónico en la generación de otros efectos pragmáticos (la ironía o el humor, u otros) en el ámbito del discurso oral. Palabras clave: Pragmática, entonación, conversación, (des)cortesía, lingüística de corpus